Thursday, November 13, 2008

Socializing Education Lowers Its Quality

Ah, by "tragedy of the commons" here you mean the lack of per-family ability to shop for more efficient schools and to capture the marginal savings caused by exerting such consumer pressure. Yes, those are essential features of competition, and are somewhat analogous how efforts to care for a commons are not properly rewarded. However, a true commons has to be inherently non-excludable, rather than being something that by government fiat is currently shared. Alas, forced sharing can create commons-like tragedies for any kind of good.